Vinyl on the rise?; Local store owners say analog music market seeing turnaround

Maybe the age of vinyl hasn't come to an end; maybe it's time to flip the album over. Arcata musician Tanasa Daniel, 35, buys vinyl two or three times a week at local record stores.

"I like the analog recording and the era," Daniel said while browsing at People's Records in Arcata. "There's like a warmth and essence that isn't in digital recording."

Daniel started collecting before he started school. Once he became a teenager, he began buying records on a weekly basis. Today the 35-year-old has accumulated 5,000 to 6,000 albums.

"My family is into music and I'm a musician, so I've been into music my whole life," Daniel said. "I can't afford to just buy everything on vinyl, but I try."

Daniel is not alone.

People's Records owner Steve Lovett said record sales are on the rise as younger people tune in to the lure of a turntable.

"I think there's a generation of kids who grew up in the digital age, and they really don't find MP3s unique," Lovett said of the popular audio compression file format found everywhere online. "I think they get more out of a record than an MP3."

All things vinyl will be celebrated Saturday during Record Store Day -- a nationwide event aimed at recognizing independent record stores -- which sees bands and labels release extremely limited edition albums.

Roughly 500 copies are made and sent all over the world, Lovett said.

People's Records and The Works in Eureka are two of the places that will have a select number of copies. The Works owner Bandon Taylor said the record market has turned around.

"The major labels in the last five years have all jumped back into pressing vinyl," Taylor said.

While it is difficult to compete with the Internet and free downloads, people are attracted to records for the quality.

"Sound moves in a wave pattern," Lovett said. "When you hear a song on a record, you hear the wave pattern.

"When you listen to an MP3, you're listening to a form that has a lot of the highs taken out and the lows taken out because they need to compress it in order for it to fit online," he added. "In the future, there could be formats that are better than vinyl, but that's not the case right now."

The physical medium also offers a closer bond to the artist.

"The way I look at it is it's something that your soul connects with more," Taylor said. "Holding a record in your hand. Putting it on the turntable. Looking at the jacket. The cover art.

"My feeling is ... the artist was expressing some kind of artistic statement in making an album as opposed to a batch of songs that are going to be distributed digitally and be driven by the sale of individual MP3s as opposed to a whole album," he said.

For customer Jan Williams -- who purchased a record for her 19-year-old son on Wednesday -- vinyl brings back memories.

"I like to listen as it was recorded at that time. Not with all this stuff added onto it," Williams said. "It sounds enhanced, but I like listening to it as it was originally done."

Taylor agreed.

"Some of us just feel on a soulful, spiritual level. When you're listening to a vinyl, you're listening to the real deal," he said.